My grown-up New Year's list

There’s a Christmas song that always brings a catch to my throat: “The Grown-up Christmas List” … you know, that “time would heal all hearts, right would always win, everyone would have a friend, and love would never end.”

This song popped into my head as I reflected on 2012. Right now, there are thunder clouds on our horizon. I know there will still be times of joy and promise. But something precious seems to be racing away from us, and many people seem to be clueless, just along for the ride.

So I’ve compiled a grown-up New Year’s list, and my fervent prayer is … for more grown-ups.

I want to ask, where did the wise men go? The brave, the true, the loving and dependable? Praise God, there are still a few, but only a few. And courageous, Titanic-style “women-and-children-first” nobility ought to be the norm among the most prominent in our nation, but instead is a rarity.

Some of us sigh over the embrace of evil and the smear campaigns against goodness. What do we do when “right” did not win in November, but we are stuck with a greatly compromised leader of the free world? He’s not a straight-shooter, but a man who lacks character, who collaborates with baby-and-man-hating feminists, sexual deviates, Marxists, jihadists – radicals whose legacy has never been anything but heartbreak, tears, financial ruin, even death.

It’s true that God may have a plan. That plan looks like it’s going to include an ample dose of tough love judgments for America, some delivered through Barack Obama’s foolishness and wickedness, and yet we must trust the Lord and still bear it.

“But what about the unborn babies who will be sacrificed?” our hearts cry. My grown-up list wanted them to live in 2013, along with the children in Newtown. Barack Obama’s directives – past, present and future – will ensure that more unborn little ones die.

Oh, I’m aware that Mitt Romney was not an ideal candidate, and he avoided the hard social issues like the plague. He would not have consigned so many little lives to death by inconvenience, however. And he was, to some extent, more of a grown-up.

We do not have an adult in the White House now, however. We have a clever, weak man in dress-up clothes, propped up by a cardboard media. This man cries at a press conference over the slaughter of the innocents at their elementary school, but signs bills forcing you and me to fund the slaughter of children just a few years younger in Planned Parenthood clinics nationwide. He has even supported the “right” to snuff out the lives of unborn little girls, unwanted by boy-biased parents. Or if mom really wanted an abortion and something goes “wrong” and the viable child lives, this isn’t allowed. The “Born Alive Infant Protection Act” attempted a life-saving remedy, but Obama found himself unable to support life for these children.

Too bad – the “grown-ups” didn’t want you, so you don’t matter. Let’s pass more gun-control bills to convince each other we care about “the children.”

For 2013, I want true civility. I don’t want my Lord and Savior to be dishonored in even more creatively diabolical ways. Atheist groups are filing harassment suits right and left to suppress expressions of Christian faith, evidence that the existence of Almighty God really does bug them. They seem to leave Muslims alone, despite Islamic support for anti-woman and anti-homosexual policies. Apparently, atheists are only infuriated by real divine power.

A rapper records a trash piece with nonsense about Jesus and makes headlines and new piles of cash. The homosexual crowd has numerous entries in the Christ-bashing competition, starting with the “Hunky Jesus” contest out in San Francisco, a blasphemous mockery that defies description. God have mercy on them.

Such demonic actions have been unleashed, and God is not holding them back. And even more telling, many people have no recognition this is truly the work of Satan. That blindness is another evidence of God’s permissive will. He is giving us just what we’ve asked for.

I also don’t want my country to head off the famed fiscal cliff, aided by “conservatives” who now offer to lift the debt limit and raise taxes on the highly productive in our country “just this once.” Again, it seems that the fear of a hostile press, not principle, determines the conservative agenda. Will our country face a major economic crisis in 2013, or will it just be delayed to 2014 or 2015? Kick the can, kick the can.

I would like schools led by mature people who transmit wisdom, not myths. What is taking place in our schools is a daily tragedy, even before the slaughter of little children. Our hearts should be torn apart by the schoolroom lies that spawn callous disregard for God and each other, embedded in lessons on evolution (“you are just a higher animal”), lessons covering every loony worldview except Western civilization (“white male racism and patriarchy”) and “anti-bullying” programs that are often hijacked as vehicles for children to embrace or applaud homosexuality. Some teens now take sex-change hormones, use the opposite-sex restrooms, and all of this is “progress.” Where, or where, are any real adults?

And then there’s the issue of Israel. What will happen to this brave nation in 2013? How much more virulent will leftist anti-Semitism become? And what will our president do? Will he try to force Israelis to endanger themselves further by unworkable “land for peace” deals with phony promises from historically untrustworthy Islamists?

If Israel is harmed, run for cover, United States.

How do believers live under occupation? We who claim the Lord as Savior are truly strangers here now. There are still quite a few of us, though, and with God, all things are still possible.

So at the top of my list is a request. I ask you, if you happen to be a grown-up, speak out! Make a difference. Be ready to fight for what’s right. We can, by this time next year, have a completely different story to tell.

Don’t let the darkness descend on America. Be brave enough, mature enough, to shine the light of truth in 2013.